before and thought "why would I waste money on a a set of brushes to clean this thing."
Except one day when using your Camelbak, you might notice some funk in the middle of the tube.
It turns out funk is hard to photograph.
But I digress.
The funk made me think twice about that Cleaning Kit (the fact that I still had a credit at backcountry.com, and that they were offering free 2-day shipping for 4th of July weekend didn't hurt either).
The mouthpiece detached from the tube easily. Once I got past the hard part (pulling the tube off of the "bladder"... needed the man of the house to do that for me. Or, I just loosened it up for him. Either way) --the cleaning part was quite easy.
But also quite disgusting.
The above funk was obtained from the "delivery tube." I ran hot water through both ends of the tube first, before swabbing it with the brush. I stuck the brush in from both ends several times, washing the brush off in between, until the brush was finally clean when I pulled it out of the tube.
Ta Da! A clean delivery tube.
(That's just water inside).
And that, my friends, is why you should clean your Camelbak.
(I used the larger brush to scrub out the bladder/reservoir but I think I have done a good job of opening it and allowing it to air dry in between uses and therefore did not produce any gross-ness from that cleaning).
I recently switched from Camelbak to Nathan and one of the best parts is that the Nathan hydration pack is SO much easier to clean.
ReplyDeleteThe funk that can collect in a Camelbak is nasty! I bet your next run will be awesome with such fresh tasting water! :)
OMG Amanda, this is disgusting, we have 2 camelbaks so i'm going to have to buy one of these asap
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up and the funk photos lol :o)
I really need to get a camelbak or a nathan hydration vest thing. this post just makes me want one even more
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post. I just got a camelbak for my husband and cleaned it per the website. Um, I didn't know the tube came apart from the bladder! Oops. Now I think I need a cleaning kit...
ReplyDeleteI need to get A Camelbak! I hate wearing water belts. Now that I know how easy cleaning it is, I might have to hop on over to the running store in my area and pick one up!
ReplyDeletepart of me wishes that I had not seen this. Ignorance was bliss!
ReplyDelete::screams::
ReplyDeleteI am totally going to clean my Camelbak now. OMG. :-)
ReplyDeleteYep, I've done that and it's just gross to realize you were drinking out of it the day before. Actually I think mine may be due for some cleanup.
ReplyDeleteKara- didn't realize the Nathan hydration systems varied too much from Camelbak, I'll have to look some up to compare now. I'm so grossed out that that stuff was in there and I didn't even notice it tasted different.
ReplyDeleteDonna- definitely worth it! I tried looking for skinny brushes at kitchen stores but wasn't able to find a small enough one.
Michelle- I'm impressed that the dirty pictures make you want one :-p
Kathleen- it was really hard to pull the tube off. I started to think it wasn't supposed to, but the back of the cleaning kit showed that it should separate.
Christina- I mostly use my camelbak for hiking and biking. I've never tried a belt. I use a handheld bottle for longer runs. When I got my backpack, I bought it for biking because I wasn't running much at the time. I think if you get one for running it should have the chest strap so there's less jostling around? (Mine doesn't have a chest strap).
Once I thought about things like: why such information is for free here? Because when you write a book then at least on selling a book you get a percentage. Thank you and good luck on informing people more about it!
ReplyDeletecamelbak